Middle School, Mathematics Curriculum

Curriculum Implementation

Teachers of mathematically talented students need to have confidence in their own mathematical knowledge and teaching abilities in order to understand and accept the divergent and sometimes creative thinking abilities of their gifted students. More often than not, untrained or inexperienced teachers provide the mathematically gifted and talented students with what is available, such as enrichment worksheets, but it is important to realize that extra quantity does not indicate mathematical quality.

For many mathematics teachers, the textbook is a primary guide to implementing the curriculum. Late in 1997, the Carnegie Corporation of New York agreed to fund the first of a series of evaluations of textbooks in mathematics and science, and work began in early 1998 on middle school math curriculum materials. Project 2061, as it was named, found that most of the textbooks are inconsistent and weak in coverage of conceptual benchmarks in mathematics, weak in their instructional support for students and teachers, and provide little development in sophistication of mathematical ideas from Grades 6 to 8. The evaluation also found that a majority of textbooks are particularly unsatisfactory in providing a purpose for learning mathematics, taking account of student ideas, and promoting student thinking. This research highlights the finding that middle school students experience repetitious and nonchallenging mathematics programs. As a result, their achievement and interest in mathematics stalls, and they may not be able to take advantage of the full range of academic and career options in the future. Mathematically talented middle school students need a curriculum that can be differentiated by level, complexity, depth, and breadth. This type of curriculum, however, cannot be supported by the textbooks being used in the typical mathematics classroom.

Since most researchers would agree that talented young mathematicians would benefit from appropriate levels of challenge, it is unfortunate that current research indicates they seldom receive it. In research conducted on differentiated instruction, [Page 569]most middle school teachers struggle with how to differentiate math instruction effectively for their most talented math students. In one in-depth observation study of 46 American classrooms by researchers at the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented, little differentiation in instructional and curricular practices was implemented by classroom teachers for gifted and talented students in the regular classroom. Karen Westberg found that across five subject areas and 92 observation days, gifted and talented or high-ability students experienced no instructional or curricular differentiation in 84 percent of the instructional activities in which they participated, including mathematics.

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